


iDragon 5C

by nomz_bunny, yellowcars



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, F/M, Kilgarrah is an iPhone app, M/M, yeah just kill us now
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-15
Updated: 2014-06-23
Packaged: 2017-12-08 13:18:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/761759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nomz_bunny/pseuds/nomz_bunny, https://archiveofourown.org/users/yellowcars/pseuds/yellowcars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reincarnation fic.</p><p>Merlin Emrys, like most people seem to these days, has a phone. The funny thing about his phone, though, is that it has a voice app named Kilgarrah that keeps trying to prophesy at him, and it won't stop going on about a certain Arthur Pendragon. The Arthur in question, meanwhile, has no idea what the hell is going on. Add in concerned friends and father-son drama, and the road to remembrance suddenly looks quite rocky indeed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. it understands what you say and knows what you mean

**Author's Note:**

> The "5C" in the title comes from the fact that the original King Arthur legend is supposed to have taken place around the 5th century. (Why yes we _do_ consider ourselves terribly creative.)

From the beginning, Merlin Emrys had realized that his phone was like no other.

Or, perhaps to phrase it more accurately (because god knows an English major like him could always find more words for the same thing), at least one very small and terribly crucial part of it was. Otherwise it was a perfectly normal rectangularish block of black plastic, shiny and prone to falling off of high surfaces when least expected to, encased in a fanciful case (cracked, though that was accidental) with a stylized view of a supernova remnant taken by the Hubble Deep Space Telescope. His mother had given him the ridiculously expensive device when he’d first ventured into the perilous depths of Grown-Up Life; because he was a good son, and because his last phone was an ancient object that still had the remnants of an antenna on, he’d gratefully accepted.

(He’d paid his mother back, though. He was a good son.)

Certainly it was helpful in the real world and all that such a phrase entailed; he generally never went anywhere without it, although he was also by no means a social butterfly (more like one of those moths that tended to blend into the walls, until you couldn’t tell whether they were even alive or not) and so generally his days were mostly spent holed up comfortably at home, on his computer or reading a book or fiddling with all the wonderful pastimes that technology could offer. 

It did not take very many introverted rainy days to discover the voice-answering app; really, it could be said that _it_ found _him_. He had been making himself an explosion of a sandwich (the last of the ham with a bit of slightly stale cheese) on a Saturday morning when the thing started making itself most definitively heard.

 _TAP THE MICROPHONE TO SAY A COMMAND_ , it intoned, in a voice oddly unlike the placid feminine pitch usually reserved for electronic messages (Merlin personally thought that this was rather sexist, and the voices generally creeped him out besides, what with the fact that they would randomly stress syllables out of nowhere; there was only so much “Y- _ou_ have _one_ new _mess_ -age; _mess_ -age _one_ ” that any sane person could be reasonably take) and instead sounding distinctly gravelly.

His phone flashed on expectantly.

Merlin, for his part, head turned away from the counter on which the thing was sitting smugly, thought it was a murderer and only managed to not damage his sandwich any further. He put the blob of unhealthy preservatives down with a clatter and his eyes seized upon the phone, which was still lit up.

 _TAP THE MICROPHONE, YOUNG WARLOCK_.

“Oh _god_ ,” said Merlin, walking over and giving it a sharp look, not registering the second half of the imposition. And then, because he had a bad habit of talking to air, “I thought someone had gotten in, or something.” (He couldn’t help but check the door lock, though, after the shock had worn off. One could never be too careful. 

_I AM NOT A MURDERER, YOUNG WARLOCK._

Merlin gaped.

“I didn’t even hit the button!” he said petulantly, thumb poised over the button in question, whose purple icon was blinking pleasantly. Two other things struck him at about the same time. _“Warlock?”_ and, not much later, “I am _not_ having this conversation with my phone.” Speaking with air was bad enough, surely!

_BUT WE ARE SPEAKING, ARE WE NOT, YOUNG WARLOCK?_

Merlin stared, and sighed, and then ran his fingers through his needed-cutting hair.

“Not really,” he said. 

_NICE TO MEET YOU, YOUNG WARLOCK. YOU MAY CALL ME KILGHARRAH._

  
And so began the strangest journey he had ever known.


	2. The Great Wizard Bob

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arthur.

Arthur had been having a miserable day. Morgana had already called him a prick fifteen times and he’d just narrowly avoided another time on his way out of the office. Just because he had protested the request form for a new copy machine didn’t mean that he was a “penny pinching bastard that ought to be strung up by his balls and tied to his precious space-age horror story of a copy machine.” Arthur shuddered as he picked up the pace in case Morgana decided to actually chase after him to implement that threat.

Pushing open the door to the local Starbucks, he inhaled the scent of coffee gratefully. Perhaps a Mocha cookie crumble with extra chocolate frappuccino, topped with whipped cream would help his day. And with no Morgana or Gwen to mock him for his white girl drink choices, he’d treat himself to a slab of that marble cake as well.

So thinking, he hummed happily in line and awaited the moment he’d taste the icy sweet delight from a green straw. He finally made his way to the counter and then–then his hope for a better day slid down a drain. The man in front of him was taking absolutely forever. He glanced down at his watch and shook his head in irritation. His me-time break would only last for ten more minutes and the walk back to the office was about 5 minutes if he walked at a brisk pace.

“No, really, it’s Merlin!” the man was gesturing wildly now. The poor barista was scowling disapprovingly at the man and tapped the Sharpie in his hand.

“Seriously, dude? You really expect me to believe that your name is ‘Merlin’?” He rolled his eyes and sighed, “Dude, I dunno what the online forums say, but we’re not gonna steal your identity or whatever the shit. Just tell me your name, okay? I ain’t like the other baristas, ain’t serving you coffee if you make up some stupid name for me to call and look like a dumbass, all right? Now, you gonna tell me your name or what?”

Arthur sighed as the man who claimed to be named “Merlin” sucked in a breath and seemed ready to go at it again. Time to intervene so that he could get coffee.

“Mate, it obviously isn’t your name. Now, would you please tell the barista your name and let him do his job so that the rest of us can buy our coffee?” Arthur was quite proud of his little speech. There was no way Gwen could’ve written a kinder, more subtly scathing speech.

Apparently, “Merlin” didn’t agree with Arthur on this, as his face flushed red when the people behind Arthur who were aware of the situation rumbled out “yeah” and “fucking get on with it.” He started fumbling in his pocket but then his face fell and he turned back around to the barista to mumble out a “Bob.”

“See? It wasn’t that hard, bro,” the barista said, already scrawling the three letter name on the white cardboard cup and handing it off to another worker.

As Arthur stepped forward to place his order he heard the man mumble out a “prat” under his breath–but obviously meant for Arthur to hear. He rolled his eyes at the stupidity of some people and when the barista asked for his name, he answered with a pointed look in the other man’s direction.

“Nope.”

Arthur’s head snapped back towards the barista. He wasn’t sure, but he thought that the kid had just rejected his name?

“Nope, man,” he repeated, confirming Arthur’s suspicion. “I dunno if you’re in the same group of funnies as Bob over there, but I ain’t stupid and King Arthur of the Round Table and his faithful wizard Merlin are not going to be served.”

Arthur barely repressed a groan of disbelief as he realized the barista thought that he was playing a prank.

“Ha!” a loud burst of laughter came from the left of Arthur as Bob chortled away. “Serves you right, you horrible prat!”

Arthur glared at him and dug around in his pocket until he got out his wallet and shoved the side with his driver’s license under the barista’s nose.

“Arthur. Pendragon.” He turned his glare to the kid that was coming between him and his frappuccino. “Now, can you please get me my drink?”

And thus, the situation was defused and the barista apologized, Arthur’s drink was made, and the day turned from miserable to tolerable with whipped cream.

–

The rest of the day passed as all days pass when you’re the financial manager/sponsor of a reasonably successful brain trust. Morgana called him a prick eight more times before Arthur finally gave in and did what she wanted (which, as it turned out, was _not_ to buy a dilapidated, antique copy machine with only one button–rather, it was for Arthur to agree to be the sole person responsible for making copies for the rest of the year). Gwen apologized for Morgana’s manipulative ways with a coffee cake placed in his office and Morgause showed her appreciation of her half-sister’s wily ways by stopping by his office and stealing half of the coffee cake.

Everything progressed as normal until he was going home and he walked out the door with his head down, mind focused on the very important question of which takeout place his dinner was going to be coming from tonight. The moment he made it out the door he collided with someone and the impact knocked the air out of him for a second.

“Oi! Watch where you’re going!” he wheezed, sucking in a gulp of air. Jeez, it had felt like a pointy sword had jabbed him in the gut. And no wonder, looking up he saw that the man he’d crashed into was made up of skin and bones. On second glance though, he scowled in irritation. It was Bob from Starbucks!

“You again?”


	3. Ten-Point-Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the extreme and inexcusable lateness of this chapter! I am fully to blame (with help from the tail-end of high school, graduation shenanigans, and then general celebratory summer laziness) but hopefully the following shenanigans make up for it? |D;;
> 
> xiy

Merlin still wasn’t sure yet whether he could get used to his phone providing him with a running commentary about just how badly he was ruining his life. Every few minutes the damned thing would make that stupid _doop-boop_ noise and shout _Young Warlock!_ at him in a horribly smug voice, and he would practically dislocate both arms in an attempt to make it stop.

“Kilgarrah” (as if the whole “young warlock” thing weren’t enough, apparently his phone’s eccentricities extended well into self-naming territory) was having none of it. Every time Merlin shoved his phone back into his pocket, it would gleefully make another pithy comment about the state of humanity, or Merlin’s life choices, or—God forbid—his _destiny_.

He’d tried to escape; bloody hell, he’d tried. At twenty to one in the afternoon, with his stomach grumbling and his sanity unable to put up with one more telephonic beep, Merlin decided to take advantage of his twenty-five-minute lunch break and stumble out of the lab for some sugar and caffeine. He had very carefully made sure to leave the bane of his current existence on his desk (near the mess of notebooks, scrap paper, and little wobbly ergonomic office ornaments that had somehow sprung up and mated there), but just as he made his hasty exit, his phone (with, of course, Kilgarrah therein) made a truly heroic flying _leap_ into his jacket pocket and lodged itself there with commendable determination.

At least, Merlin imagined it must have done. What he knew was that he had _very emphatically_ left his phone behind, and yet when he stumbled Starbucks, he suddenly felt a sinking plasticky weight in his pocket and heard a cheerful “Young Warlock, you could have taken a much more efficient 5.3-minute route! Let me determine your coordinates next time, hm?”

It was there. His bloody phone had bloody _followed him_. (It had jumped! It must have jumped!)

Of course, right then he’d been distracted by the sudden bounty of coffee-based beverages. His phone beeped again: “Now go forth and _meet your destiny!_ ” Merlin ignored it. He was getting very good at ignoring it, and he really wanted a cappuccino (or possibly some booze). The air smelled nice, like coffee and caramel and chocolate, and it was filled with the quiet manic buzz of caffeinated conversation. The windows were steamed up and it wasn’t unpleasant, though it did make it difficult to see who was coming into the shop.

His phone chose that moment to mutter (and Merlin’s phone elevated the mechanical mutter to an _art_ ) something about how Merlin was only punctual for two things, his king and his food, which Merlin didn’t understand at all and promptly forgot when he began to scan the menu board.

Then his day, which had been looking up, promptly veered into a swamp. He’d been forced to argue with the Starbucks barista, trying to tell the berk that _Merlin_ wasn’t even that hard to _spell_ , goddamnit, and did he _look_ like some sort of conspiracy theorist paranoid about identity theft, because, come on, _all he wanted was his goddam triple shot of espresso_ —and so on.

But it was, inevitably, useless. Merlin thought that there should have been some sort of universal law about the omnipotence of a grinning barista armed with a shiny new Sharpie. He lost the argument and a good portion of his dignity, which was duly trampled under the impatient tapping feet of the long line behind him.

Meanwhile, his phone was going crazy, inexplicably buzzing and chirping up a storm, which definitely didn’t help. Everybody was starting and nobody even felt sorry for him, even though he felt he was quite deserving of some sympathy by that point. The minute he’d slunk out with his drink (behind him, some other poor blond bastard getting harassed by the same barista), his ears felt like twin torches, fire-engine red and probably letting off steam to boot.

The walk back to the lab went badly. His coffee was too scalding to drink (though he did try, multiple times) and Kilgarrah was still having pitching a hissy fit. So rabid was its rant that Merlin actually had to take it out of his pocket, to make sure it wasn’t literally melting down. (Un?)fortunately, the phone itself was still in its usual slightly-scuffed condition, but now he could hear the insults at twice the volume.

“ _Young Warlock!”_ it had screamed at him, “ _How dare you have wasted this golden opportunity that fate his thrown upon your ever-undeserving shoulders! Your destiny is at this minute fifteen-point-five-three feet from your current location and you gave it not a single glance? Return at once, you absolute fool! Young Warlock! Return at once, stupid useless boy! Your king was right, you_ are _a clotpole!_ _Don’t you try to adjust the volume, clot! A blind man could have seen his king more clearly than Emrys the idiot, I see! Young Warlock! Foolish wizard! Your magic is wasted—_ ”

Et cetera. Merlin, wishing it were possible (or manly) to swoon from embarrassment (it wasn’t), merely walked faster and took another chokingly-hot gulp of cappuccino as he stuffed his phone back into the depths of his jacket. His palm was pressed against the speakers, but it didn’t do much to muffle the noise.

Thankfully, it was mid-November, which meant that, even during lunch hour, very few people were walking through the streets of Carlton. Regrettably, the people who _were_ out all stared at Merlin.

He made it back to the university lab in miserable spirits, ruing the day he’d ever made the decision to move from the (relative) comforts of Cardiff to godforsaken semi-rural Minnesota, of all places. He clocked back in without really paying any attention to what he was doing. Nobody else was there; his fellow unlucky data-crunching slaves were probably in classes, while the real scientists were off conducting who-knows-what important secret research.

Even his coffee couldn’t fully mask the taste of absolute confusion and complete what-the-fuck brought on by his phone’s (still-ongoing) tirade. He realized he was still hungry; in the rush he’d forgotten to buy even a tantalizingly greasy pastry. Merlin slumped over his desk and moaned. He nearly overturned his coffee cup in the process.

“Young Warlock! Remove yourself at once!” howled his phone.

“But I’ve only just gotten back,” mumbled Merlin, head still cradled in arms.

“Your _destiny_ , Young Warlock, awaits you 1.5 miles to the northwest, fastest route by foot twenty-seven minutes, and you sit here blithering like an idiot? Cease at once!”

Merlin said something unintelligible even to his own ears. Kilgarrah ignored him, its mechanical voice suddenly dropping to a (bizarre and unsettling) purr. “Young Warlock,” it said, and Merlin blinked at the unexpected (and somehow scary) tone. “There is a combined sandwich shop/bakery by the name of The Second Slice 1.7 miles away, accessible by foot in 31.1 minutes or by three bus routes in 10.3, 11.9, and 16.7 minutes, respectively. Shall I plot a route for you?”

“Er,” said Merlin.

Kilgarrah chimed. “Route prepared, Young Warlock. Is your wish to Begin Route or Cancel? Only I shall let you know right now that Cancel _is not an option_.” (There was, Merlin was positive, the slightest hint of a growl in the last four words.)

He really _was_ quite hungry. Merlin sighed. “Fine, then. I mean, er, start. Or Begin or whatever.”

“Eloquent as usual, Young Warlock.”

 

* * *

 

Merlin took the bus. Of course, since it was so obviously his lucky day, the heater was broken and he had to endure ten-point-three minutes of being only marginally warmer than he had been outside. Kilgarrah’s directions were surprisingly accurate, though he wished his phone wouldn’t keep emitting happy little chirps every few minutes as he neared the promised bakery. He wasn’t sure why it was so important he reach the place, but his stomach wasn’t complaining. (Or rather, it was complaining, and quite loudly too, but with the potential to be louder without the prospect of a sandwich in the aforementioned ten minutes.)

The bus dropped him off at a stop in front of a smart, hip-looking office block redolent of eco-friendly window fixtures and sharp minimalist logos. In fact, Merlin was so busy trying to decipher one of those logos that he rammed straight into a rather solid object rushing from behind.

“ _Jeezus_ ,” he yelped, finally fed up with the way fate seemed determined to beat him into the ground. Only then did he think to look up, and was confronted by a rather tall, very blond, and exceptionally angry-looking man staring down at him.

“You again?” said the man, in an exasperated (and Merlin thought, rather unnecessary) way.

Merlin didn’t understand what he meant. “What? And that’s rich, coming from someone who can’t bother to look where he’s going before rushing into innocent bystanders!” He was becoming rather heated. He blamed low blood sugar and cell-phone-induced stress. (For some reason, Kilgarrah was beeping madly again. He could hear a faint _seize the day this time, clot!_ emanating from his jacket, and hoped his blond assailant couldn’t hear.)

“ _Me_ , not looking where _I’m_ going!” said the man, his voice raising an octave. “How about you not standing all gormless and drooling in the middle of the sidewalk!” He was English, Merlin noted, and a rather poncy specimen at that. (Growing up, Merlin had considered most English to be insufferable arses, but this one was pushing even Merlin’s low standards.)

“Look,” said Merlin, attempting to disengage from the rapidly-burgeoning argument. “I’m just trying to get to the bakery, all right, mate? I don’t want a fight.”

The man rolled his eyes. “Oh, I see, _you_ don’t want a fight. The man mauling people randomly with his elbows doesn’t want a fight!” His glare, if possible, hardened. “By _bakery_ you don’t mean The Second Slice, do you?”

Oh god. “What if I do?” said Merlin, still (he felt) deservedly combatative.

A groan from his opponent. “I was going there too, as a matter of fact.”

Oh _god_. “Well,” said Merlin, suddenly wondering whether he really needed that sandwich, after all.

There was an uncomfortable silence. The man looked sulky, then coughed. “All right, then, I suppose we might as well make up and get on with it. Before people start wondering what we’re doing here.”

Merlin was getting chilly, but he didn’t want to admit it. He sent the man an annoyed look, but his stomach chose that moment to loudly announce that it really would like a sandwich, possibly three, ASAP. He could see the blond man suppressing a snicker.

“Yeah,” Merlin said. “Fine. Yeah. Let’s go.” And he set off walking rapidly toward the bakery’s welcoming buttery light, not checking whether or not the blond man was following.

**Author's Note:**

> Come find us on Tumblr!  
> [Linda](http://alphadragons.tumblr.com) \--multifandom mess with some art/gifs  
> [xiy](http://sheeplocked.tumblr.com) \--art blog of glory


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